Abstract
In 2014, European Urban and Regional Studies (EURS) awarded the first Jim Lewis Prize. The prize was established to mark the contributions of the former Editor, Jim Lewis, and to highlight the most innovative paper published in the previous year in the journal (see editorial announcement in European Urban and Regional Studies 21(1)). Following nominations from the journal’s Editorial Board, a number of papers were considered by the journal’s Editors. We are delighted to announce the prize award to Stig-Erik Jakobsen, Elvira Uyarra, Rune Njøs and Arnt Fløysand for their paper ‘Policy action for green restructuring in specialized industrial regions’, European Urban and Regional Studies 29(3): 312–331.
Nick Henry and Adrian Smith, Editors-in-Chief
We are thrilled and honoured to receive the Jim Lewis 2023 prize from the European Urban and Regional Studies journal for our article ‘Policy action for green restructuring in specialized industrial regions’. The article ties into decade-long research activities at the Mohn Centre for Innovation and Regional Development, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (WNUAS). The Mohn Centre research group has particularly worked with investigations of industrial restructuring processes in the oil-dependent region of Western Norway, and our research includes contributions towards the literature on, among others, responsible innovation, innovation systems, regional development, sustainability transitions and transformative innovation policy. Our research has been guided towards ongoing development processes in the region and has included studies of firms and organizations, industry clusters, regional innovation systems, regional industries (prominently, salmon farming, maritime industry, petroleum) and policy.
Our research has furthermore formed the basis for research-based counselling towards regional development actors in the public and private sectors. The research group’s ambition to investigate ongoing development processes in the region and to develop applied knowledge for action based on this has been linked to an overall strategic ambition of contributing to innovation and regional development in Western Norway. The award-winning article is an example of this philosophy, where, building on previous research and insight into regional circumstances, the article sought to synthesize and comprehend not only descriptive accounts of restructuring processes in the region but also to link this to knowledge-based recommendations for action. Three of the authors, Stig-Erik Jakobsen, Rune Njøs and Arnt Fløysand, have been affiliated with the Mohn Centre over this period, while Elvira Uyarra (University of Manchester) has been affiliated as an adjunct professor.
The article was part of the project ‘Drivers of regional economic restructuring’ funded by the Regional Research Fund of Western Norway. The project’s main objective was to identify and elaborate on the drivers and barriers for regional restructuring in Western Norway, specifically focusing on green restructuring. The project encompassed analyses of established firms and industries and the emergence of new firms and sectors within the region. In addition, it included an investigation of the current policy framework for regional industrial restructuring and discussions of how to develop a new framework for green industry restructuring.
Western Norway, the most oil-dependent region in Norway, faces a dual challenge. It must develop a more diverse and less oil-dependent regional economy and ensure that this restructuring also leads to a greener and more sustainable industry structure. Throughout the project’s duration (2017–2020), there was an increasing emphasis among policymakers and industry actors that the region needs not only industry restructuring but green industry restructuring – but the urgent question was how. This higher priority for green restructuring also set the stage for the award-winning article initiated towards the end of the project period. The article intended to couple evolutionary economic geography’s deep understanding of regional industrial restructuring with insight from the sustainability literature’s understanding of green transitions and transformative industrial change in order to move towards a framework for key policy requirements for facilitating green industrial restructuring. This led us towards a framework that consisted of four dimensions: policy experimentation, market nurturing, resource reconfiguration and policy mix coordination.
First, as there is no quick fix for green restructuring, a key point is that we need policy experimentation to design test and trial new solutions. This also involves a reformulation of policy problems and goals, meaning that new strategies and tools should be developed. Second, policymakers should contribute to market nurturing, such as protected spaces for new green products, specific tax regimes or public procurement. It is difficult for new green products to compete with established products and solutions, and markets for certain technologies may not exist due to uncertainties around customer needs, lack of standards or uncertainty about costs and benefits. Policy plays an important part in shaping such market demands. Third, policy for green restructuring should encourage resource reconfiguration. Firms’ capabilities and the skills of individuals reflect regions’ historical development, meaning that previous activities will shape future industrial paths. Strategies for altering industrial trajectories should be sensitive towards this, meaning that new green product development and new green industries must be developed based on existing resources. However, in addition to stimulating configuration of the existing resources, policy must support the development of the new resources lacking within the existing resource base. Finally, fourth, green restructuring in regions requires policy coordination of the breadth of instruments available within multiple policy domains and governance levels. This means that regional innovation policy in isolation is not able to contribute to green restructuring unless this is linked to changes in adjacent policy domains, such as planning or energy, and, importantly, that the palette of governance levels (regional, national, international) is taken into consideration. Thus, coordination of the policy mix is needed to stimulate complementarity between policy areas and instruments at different levels of governance in order to identify and approach conflicts, tensions and dilemmas between policy domains and aims.
The article argues that these four policy dimensions and their linkages to temporal and place-based conditions provide a framework for assessing the greening potential of policies for green industrial restructuring. More specifically, we argue that policy action for green restructuring of industrially specialized regions can contribute towards greening on a continuum from ‘light green’ (minor greening potential) towards ‘dark green’ (major greening potential). Policy initiatives targeting minor policy experimentation (merely an adaptation of existing instruments), low degree of market nurturing, mainly reuse of existing resources and lack of policy coordination contribute towards light green restructuring. Conversely, a high degree of policy experimentation emphasizing introduction of novel policy instruments, nurturing of new markets, profound changes to existing resources and/or creation and importing new resources, and efficient coordination of the breadth of regional and extra-regional policy initiatives represent a potential for deep green restructuring. The latter is an example of a high degree of change both on firm and system levels.
This framework was furthermore applied in an empirical analysis of new green technology pathways in the oil-dependent region of Western Norway. We found that our framework provides a suitable scheme for assessing the role of policy. However, it is important to stress that such an analysis should account for the heterogeneity of green technology pathways and the complexity of policy formulation – a region hosts many different industries, and analyses should be sensitive towards assessing all relevant areas of policy and policy action. Furthermore, our empirical example shows how various policy actors operating at different levels of governance are promoting (or not promoting) greening processes, and we argue that, particularly, it can be expected policy coordination of this often falls short.
Hence, the article provides an example of how the Mohn Centre has conducted research on regional development processes, and this research has laid the ground for applicable knowledge that external stakeholders have used. As such, the Mohn Centre has taken an active role in coordinating the innovation system in the region, both in terms of contributing towards actors and networks on different levels. The article for which we now have won an award also ties into this, where insight – both analytically and empirically – has been of interest to regional development agencies in their efforts to facilitate systemic set-ups that enable firms and industries in the region to pursue their aims of green restructuring. The article particularly contributed insight into the role of policy facilitation at the intersection between current practices and activities, and the influence of such efforts considering multiple policy domains and levels of governance. Hence, the article serves as an illustrative example of the Mohn Centre’s ambition to contribute research at the frontier of international academic debates while also being applicable for stakeholders in the region beyond academia.
Our findings from the article were shared with the policy authorities of Vestland county administration through various channels, and it can be argued that insights from our analysis have significantly contributed to the county’s recent sustainability and green industry development strategies, particularly influencing the Green Region Western Norway project initiated in 2021. This project represents a collaborative effort to accelerate the pace, implement strategic priorities and undertake necessary actions for green restructuring in the region. It has engaged numerous regional stakeholders across the public and private sectors, although it has also revealed challenges in speeding up the green transition. One aspect included in our policy framework has been especially critical: the need for policy coordination across policy levels and domains. While regional authorities are pushing for green restructuring, some initiatives at the national level contribute to the opposite. The national petroleum policy strongly affects the oil-dependent region of Western Norway. With the recent energy crisis in Europe, the Norwegian government has decided to increase their gas production and maintain high activity in the search for new oil and gas fields. In addition, the government’s ‘rescue package’ and tax reliefs for the petroleum sector during COVID-19 (2020–2022) have spurred new investments in existing and new oil and gas fields. Thus, many supplier firms within the oil and gas sector have chosen to maintain their engagement in this sector rather than explore new opportunities in renewable energy and other related markets. This development helps maintain the petroleum industry’s pivotal role in the Norwegian economy for the foreseeable future, in turn also contributing to delaying green restructuring in Western Norway.
Perhaps pessimistically, but nevertheless realistically, there is still some way to go before a green shift becomes a reality in Western Norway. As researchers, we need to continue our analysis of ‘the regional green restructuring laboratory’ called Western Norway. Our ongoing research aims to refine our framework and insights from the award-winning article and also incorporate findings from other compelling studies published in this prestigious journal. For instance, we need to deepen our understanding of how to navigate the tensions and dilemmas encountered in policy implementation and how these issues manifest across different regional contexts. Furthermore, we believe it is important to understand how different industries within the same region experience different challenges. This means that, in the same way that there is no one-size-fits-all policy region across regions, there is also no single solution for greening of industrial activities in a region; it involves a multiplicity of industries, activities, policy domains and rationales. We believe the analytical framework developed in this article would be a useful tool for approaching such questions.
Once again, we want to thank the editors of European Urban and Regional Studies for the nomination and the award. We are also immensely thankful for the constructive feedback from anonymous reviewers and the editor throughout the article’s development process, which significantly enhanced the quality of our work. This process, and the prize, has motivated us to continue our search for better and more compelling strategies for green industry restructuring.